Maybe it's time to lower our wall circuits from 110/220 V. I mean the only things I have running off the grid now that don't have transformers of any kind are my ceiling lights and major appliances. Everything else is stepped down to 5 V (chargers) or 12 V (computer equipment)

kalleboo

@neekap: It'd make a nice, although smaller, show if you plug an LED into 12v too. At least a single one.

Sorzante

How hot do these things run without heatsinks? I didn't think you'd ever need one for LED bulbs, even with the AC/DC conversion.

On another note, wouldn't it make sense for those peddling LED bulbs to do the AC/DC conversion using a power brick at the plug level, so your lamp with the LED bulb can plug into the power brick and get 12V out? Granted, that'd probably make for one heck of a fireworks show if you shot 120V into an LED...

neekap

I like how the heat sinks look. I have a couple of LED bulbs, and I bought a bunch of LED task lamps for the recording studio I work at. They work well. They generate little heat (at least the LED task lamps don't generate much heat), and they generate next to zero unwanted RFI, which makes for a clean recording environment.

While aluminum is a great heat sink, and is recycled and reused a great deal, it takes a hell of a lot of energy to extract and refine it.

DeadWriter

A light...that generates heat...oh, you mean incandescent right? I know that LED's use less electricity, but how much wasted heat do they generate to require the heat sinks that puppy in the pic has?

smegz

that obviously WILL blend!

jdbaile3

I always figured the heat was mostly generated from inefficiencies in the AC-DC conversion for using an LED bulb in a 120v AC socket.

rjp

The evil in me wants to sharpen the edges and ask a friend to plug it in for me. Oh, wait. I meant, "That looks neat!"

LordGriffin

These look way too sweet to be hidden away in a ceiling. I suppose now I need to design a transparent holder of some sort that doesn't negate the effects of the heat sink that allows all and sunder to see this Beaut.

zenpoet

Well this isn't entirely new, at least not in regards to some commercial/industrial applications.

Jrsy is the dude, playin' the dude, disguised as another dude

Dealextreme carries a bunch of these.

jzh797s

That's not a light bulb.

It's an electric artichoke

OMG! Ponies!

@kalleboo: +1, I have actually been contemplating wiring a DC grid into a couple of rooms of my house (like a data center but lower voltage).

bpapa9013

@jdbaile3: Mount that as the blade in your blender and get smoothies and a light show at the same time, all while keeping those LEDs nice and cool!

bpapa9013

@smegz: It's not that they generate much heat, it's that incandescent bulbs are manufactured to tolerate 1000s of degrees K, because that is the mechanic by which they generate light (I.E. they are filled with a vacuum/inert gas). The material in an LED that generates light breaks down if it gets too hot.

Shai

@neekap:

LED Lights can run pretty hot, check this out for an example of water cooled LED Lamps:
[forums.fogponics.com]
also
[www.greenpinelane.com]

fogmaster

@smegz: If they are high output LED's (like a bulb pushing out 1000w+) some even need water cooling!

In particular professional LED Grow Lights put out massive heat (not as much as say HPS or MH) but they put out a lot.

NOW, the lumen to heat ratio is much less than say a standard incandescant bulb.

fogmaster

Heat is not only generated in the AC/DC conversion, but by the LED itself. An LED at 3.5V pulling 1A is consuming 3.5W of power itself, to generate light. We do not have a 100% efficient source of light right now, so we always get heat as a by product.

Actually, the AC/DC conversion is probably pretty efficient, it is the DC power consumed by the LED that is generating the heat.

You folks are probably more familiar with 5mm LEDs, which generate almost no heat at all, and correspondingly, almost no light. When you get into 1W, 3W, and 5W+ LEDs, that wattage has to go somewhere.

Take for instance, a 5mm LED, these are generally run at 0.02A (20mA), and for a white, may be around a 3.5V diode drop. That is only 0.07W or 70mW, hardly a source for heat...

Hope this helps.

technophobia

The lighting company mentioned in the article, Journee Lighting, is run by my buddy.

badhatharry

So ... you put a heatsink on your light-bulb. And then you embed it in your ceiling where there's no airflow?

Repton

@OMG! Ponies!: No...it's "ah bloomin' onion,I tell ya"!

...that,or the world's worst colorectal screening device.

FiveLiters

That looks like it could generate its own electricity.

MyPetFly

I don't think many people realize LEDs are no more efficient than CFLs. There's more upside, so eventually they may be significantly more efficient, but we're not there yet. Until then, these bulbs are pretty stupid unless you really really need super-long uptime.

Gene

@Repton: That's probably a large part of why the heatsink has to be so huge.

Gene

@jzh797s: Nice. I'm looking at some of the GU10's. Thanks for the tip.

s0crates82

Fortunately, bulbs like this are designed for recessed lighting, meaning you won't see them at all once you have them in place.

you aren't the boss of how i install my lightbulbs.

x23

@fogmaster:

1000w+ LEDs??? There's no such thing. It's nice enough to get 20 watt LEDs, and 1 watt LEDs are the current norm. A 1000w LED would need an oil-cooled radiator the size of a desk, and it would burn your retinas even with your eyes closed.

I suppose you meant 100watt? Those had just come out recently, but they're nowhere near reaching boiling point yet.

Migo

Kinda looks like an electric shaver.

Con Seannery

@Migo: Where can I get my kilowatt flashlight?

Con Seannery

@Gene: But there are a lot of other upsides--
a. They're more reliably dimmable and can be tuned much more finely for color. In white LEDs that use three different (RGB) emitters, you can have just about any color you want. b. They contain little to no mercury .
c. They tend to be much harder to break.

alpacalypse

@MyPetFly: funniest thing i read all day :)

immumo

@kalleboo, @bpapa9013:
Home DC has been the future for years, no more wasteful wall warts and you can do small solar PV without complicated dangerous inverters and permits. Back in the 80s you'd run your geodesic dome house off the grid using solar panels, deep cycle batteries, and lots of cigarette lighter ports where you'd plug in 12V equipment designed for RVs

Power over Ethernet looked promising in the early 2000s. Everywhere you run Ethernet, you have a 48V supply. But it hasn't taken off outside telcos and data centers.

These days obviously the candidate is USB's 5V 500mA supply (in high-powered mode). That's great for recharging portable devices, small lights, and bizarre USB humping dog gizmos, but it's not enough for laptops and displays. The Green Plug universal power adapter extends the USB connector to provide up to 24 V, but Intel is pathologically full of Not Invented Here syndrome.

skierpage

So how long before this thing is packed with dust and rendered ineffectual?

BigDogues

im gonna guess that heatsink is more so for what ever resistive load they are using to kick down the wattage to something manageable by the leds

phatnacky

@OMG! Ponies!: I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw that.

Sian

The majority of commercial LED's do the AC/DC conversion via a driver that is remote mounted (not on the circuit board, although this screw in residential unit would do the conversion on board). LED's produce heat because they are nothing more than a circuit board with an epoxy and a phosphor. When you push electrons through a tiny piece of copper, the resistance builds up heat (a tiny amount relative to incandescent, which is ~95% heat, 5% light) but that tiny wire will fail over time when exposed to the heat. It'd be like running your computer without any heat sink, eventually the mother board will fail. The heat sinks extend the life of the circuit board, and thus allow white LED's to last upwards of 50,000 hours (about 10-15 years in commercial apps). (Lighting engineer) Check out IO lighting for some interesting applications.

AntonioDog

@kalleboo: It was historically very hard to transport DC current (as used in your electronics) over long distances with little loss. Thus we use AC power at a higher voltage which is already being stepped down to the lower 110/220 voltage you commonly see, but still it is alternating current. We have finally overcome the hurdles of stepping DC up to high-potential / low-current (for transmission) and back down to low-potential / high-current (for consumption). Perhaps it is time to take the conversion back to the power plant?

VidorTerra